Promising update on World War Z

April 23, 2010 - By Liam Goodwin

We haven’t heard anything on Marc Forster’s worldwide Zombie epidemic movie World War Z for a while. In October author Max Brooks said the script was still being worked on, and in a recent interview with MTV he said that was still the case, with everyone waiting for Matt Carnahan to finish his latest draft which “should happen within a few weeks”.

Brooks also took part in another interview this week, and revealed something which suggests Paramount is eager to get things moving.

What can you tell us about the film adaptation of your zombie universe?

Paramount just renewed the option for World War Z, for half the time and twice the money, so that might signal interest. We still got our director, Marc Forster, who’s raring to go. Were all waiting on Matt Carnahan’s new draft, which should come in a month or so. Once that comes in then I think it probably will have to be tweaked and brought to the studio but we’re sort of zeroing in on that moment where Paramount has to say yes or no.

Budget-wise, what will the scale of World War Z be?

That’s a good question, because I think the size of the book, the scope of the book, makes it hard to produce, in that this thing’s gotta be done right or it just can’t be done. You can’t do a cheap and dirty World War Z. It’s a world war, and I think that makes studio executives nervous. I think it limits its options, so that’s running against it.

Paramount wouldn’t spend that sort of money renewing the option if they weren’t keen on turning the script into a full feature film. Marc Forster is at his best when he is making smaller movies such as Finding Neverland and Monsters Ball. I wasn’t a fan of his chopping action in Quantum of Solace, but I’m still interested in seeing which he can do with another sizeable budget and storyline set ten years after the human victory over the world wide Zombie epidemic.